Author: Emma

At my work Christmas party, on the day it finally sank in that my final round of Clomid had failed, a colleague of mine confided in me: she had been trying for a baby for three months. Nothing was working. She’d started tracking her ovulation.

‘Diddums,’ I thought. Then I told her my story. We both cried. We both got extremely drunk.

Today I found out, through another colleague, that she is pregnant. It’s the first pregnancy announcement since I received my diagnosis.

I started off writing this as a comment on Long Term IVF’s very thoughtful post about PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis – basically genetic screening of embryos) – but then decided to turn it into a post of my own, as this is something I have given a lot of thought to.

She asks:

If you knew your child might only have 18 years of life, would you decide against giving them life?

… and concludes, very fairly, that no, she wouldn’t. She would give birth to that child.

For us, we would rather take that risk, rather than never have children or never try… I don’t want to play God.

Admittedly, I haven’t put a lot of thought into life-or-death situations like that – but I have thought a lot about playing God.

Because of J’s translocation, we have a massively increased risk of either miscarriage or conceiving a child with Down’s Syndrome.

Before we decided to go down the PGD route, J and I had already decided what would happen if we conceived a child with DS. My brother and step sister have severe autism, and J’s cousin has DS, so we have both seen first hand how hard it is to bring up a child with learning disabilities.

We disagree on a lot of things – but one thing we didn’t really even need to discuss was that we would terminate a pregnancy if we found out our baby had DS.

I know, considering all the shit we have gone through, that it sounds like a crazy thing to say. But watching my brother and step sister and J’s cousin grow up into a world that doesn’t always want to make a place for them has been fraught with anguish for both our families.

As J’s mother keeps saying, his cousin has brought “so much joy into the world”.

But equally, none of them can get proper jobs, they all need round-the-clock care and getting any kind of provision for them (care, housing, a frickin job)involves a giant battle with local councils, which has become harder each time as the government cuts services. Once my parents are gone, it will be left up to my sister and me to care for my brother and step sister, which of course we will execute with a heady mixture of devotion and impatience.

Half the fight for most families is simply trying to create a purpose for them. Did you know only 17.5 per cent of learning disabled people have a job in the UK? That’s 1.3m people, many of whom are perfectly able-bodied, who desperately want to contribute to society, but can’t because most workplaces aren’t geared up to help them.

What’s heartbreaking is that my brother, my stepsister and J’s cousin all know the world they live in wasn’t made for them. They are all perfectly aware they’re not getting out of life what others do. They all know no 20-something hangs out with their parents as much as they do. They just want to go to work, hang out with their friends and fall in love, like everyone else does. But the world they exist in finds it hard let them do that.

Of course, this is a highly personal decision for everyone who makes it. Luckily for us, the PGD should mean it’s a choice we don’t have to make.

Ever since I found out about my two blocked fallopian tubes, I have adopted a sanguine, laid-back attitude to fertility. Even J has to admit I’ve been pretty relaxed.

Want to bring your kids round? Not a problem – I’ll supply the toys. A Facebook post on how awful motherhood is? Like! (Or Sad Emoji With Single Tear, depending on how much my heart is wrenched). Pregnant lady on the Tube? Why, of course you must have my seat. I wouldn’t have it any other way…

Then we spent last weekend at my best friend’s house in Bristol. My friend, S, has Baby A, who is now more like Toddler A, for she is 18 months old, saying lots of words (including ‘Dada?’ as she pawed wonderingly at J’s beard) and is generally at a very cute stage. Plus, S has what we jokingly refer to as ‘such an eye’, which means A is always dressed in a little pink tutu or tiny Nike high-tops or dungarees with a kitten on the bum or something similarly adorbs.

We spent the weekend playing with A, making dens with her and generally playing house. On the Sunday morning S and I went for a run, leaving J reading Each Peach Pear Plum with her. My ovaries.

It was fun – but this week I have felt the bitterness beginning to return.

Instagram posts of people’s kids make me cross. Someone I went to school with posted a sad lament at the fact her daughter had stopped wanting to breastfeed and I wrote a lengthy reply along the lines of “at least you have a daughter, you ungrateful bitch” (and then immediately deleted it, of course. I’m not a monster…).

Then, earlier today, I saw a heavily pregnant woman walking towards me, and got the full range of envy/hate/bitterness, all in one rush. I haven’t had that for a while. It took me by surprise. I think it took her by surprise, too – not many people scowl furiously at pregnant ladies.

It’s now just under two months until my laparoscopy. We sent off the IVF documentation to the genetics clinic this week. I just need to breathe, and be patient. And, probably, I should get off social media for a while…

There has been one, modest blessing from all this trying for a baby (apart from all the sex. *glances anxiously at J*): taking pre-pregnancy pills, in all their zincy goodness, for more than a year and a half has meant 18 months free from colds. Hallelujah.

Until three weeks ago, that is, when J had a light sniffle – and two weeks and six days ago, when my face liquified and the contents of my head leaked out of my nostrils. Then, two weeks ago, J gave a gentle cough, and the following day I contracted a mild case of Ebola.

So yesterday, when J touched his forehead and exclaimed “why, darling. I do believe I am beginning to feel under the weather”, I ran. I ran for my life.

It was too late. It is 6pm and I am in bed.

This saga is frustrating for many reasons: firstly, being ill is crap and I thought I had found the glorious secret to avoiding it.

Secondly, I have to present a live podcast, in front of an audience, with people who are actually professionally good at it, this week. My hair is a mess and my roots are several inches long and I have nothing to wear and I don’t really know what I’m talking about and who does this podcasting bollocks as a career anyway? It’s not even a real word. It sounds like something a Teletubby would do.

But lastly, it is crap because this is not the time I am supposed to be ill. I have reserved that time: it is 5 June and the week thereafter, and then the run-up to my IVF, and then hopefully also for three months after my IVF, when I will merrily vomit my guts up before settling into a rosy, pregnant glow.

The period before that, though, is supposed to be our chill-out time, when we go on holiday a lot and drink too much and get so thin people gasp and go “to be honest, I think she’s lost a bit too much weight” and have lots of youthful, carefree sex. Being ill is not part of the plan.

Besides, I literally cannot take time off at the moment – I feel far too guilty about the five-day doctor-designated rest period after the laparoscopy (followed, ahem, by a three-day jaunt to Ireland for a friend’s wedding).

O hey. Sorry about the radio silence. I have just returned from a week eating schnitzels and regaining all my Christmas weight in Austria.

Our week away was not, in any way, relaxing, for we were accompanied by my entire, extended family of in-laws, including a seven month-old in the throes of cutting her second and third teeth and two boys, aged four and 18 months, who – well, they are two boys, aged four and 18 months. The result was that our trip was soundtracked by a constant, low-level hum, punctuated by periods of intense shrieking.

On one day, as she attempted to quell the screams of her snot-covered toddler, a cousin, the mother of the two boys, confessed her and her husband’s enthusiasm for a third had begun to ebb.

“We decided both to write down on a piece of paper how much, out of 100, we wanted a third, and he had 60/100 and I had 70/100. The trouble is, now he [proffers toddler] is like this [indicates screaming], we’ve both gone down to about 10/100.”

That afternoon, as it all became too much, I dragged J out for a walk up a mountain. Having gazed at the view (some clouds, a motorway) for a few minutes, we headed down through a forest. I had to ask.

“We’re about to go through a difficult period. IVF is going to be horrible. After this week, out of 100, how much do you actually want kids?”

He paused.

“Right now, it’s pretty much at about 40/100. But on the other hand, I 100/100 don’t not want kids. And I think that is enough.”

One to keep in mind when we are the parents of shrieking, snot-covered toddlers.

I have a strong memory of a trip to the supermarket with my mother and brother that took place when I was but a girl of 12.

At the time, my little brother was five. Because he was autistic, he found it hard to understand why he should be shoved into a shopping trolley once a week and carted up and down the aisles of a grocery store. He screamed the entire time. Screamed. When you’re 12 and a boy you like works at the supermarket in question, it’s not a cool look.

During this particular trip, though, my brother was quiet. We were a couple of aisles in when I figured out why: my mum was feeding him grapes out of a bag she had picked up – one of those ones they weighed at the checkout to determine how much you should pay.

“But mama,” I cried in anguish as another grape disappeared into my brother’s gob. “You are such a moral, upstanding woman. How could you so cruelly deceive the kind, gentle folk who put the food on our table?”

“Coping strategies, dear,” she replied. “We all need them.”

—

It’s day 23 of my cycle and, despite the blocked tubes and the laparoscopies and the IVF we are currently in the process of jumping through hoops for, the Little Voice of Hope piped up today.

“You’re not PMTing like you usually would be at this time of the month,” it whispered. “You had a dizzy spell earlier. You’re not spotting. You’re probably pregnant. Go on. Take a test…”

But like my mother before me, I am cunning. I have worked out a coping strategy, too. I let the voice whisper its sweet nothings to me. Then, when it is finished, I shout, at the top of my voice, “SHUT THE FUCK UP”.